Pimping Linux

Larry Ellison's keynote today was the highlight of the day, as usual..

He announced Oracle's offering of 'premiere, enterprise-level support' for Red Hat Linux.
He claims Oracle will be able to offer the same level of support that Red Hat currently offers at half the cost, as well as providing 'premiere level' support not offered by any Linux Vendor.
In addition, Oracle will indemnify clients on the Linux platform against Intellectual Property liability-- an uncertainty brought on in the market, he argued, by litigation brought by SCO.

Oracle's new program is aimed at promoting adoption of Linux in the enterprise business sector-- overcoming the uncertainty surrounding Linux in the market.

It occurs to me to wonder why he didn't just buy Red Hat. He's certainly not been shy about making acquisitions in the last 18 months.

Of course, this isn't a move aimed at Red Hat.
This is all about Microsoft.

One of the audience members asked him if he thought this meant the end of Red Hat-- and he indicated he felt confident that Red Hat would respond in some manner.

Asked by another questioner if this would mean the end of Windows, Larry replied to great applause "Oh, we should all be so lucky."

"Our company is cooler than your company"

Camera-phone pics from last night's Appreciation Event..

Elton John..


Joan Jett..Devo..

on the show floor

Okay.. so here's the deal about the exhibition hall here at the Oracle show... and it should come as no great surprise..

Macs and iPods are everywhere!

Vendors are giving them away.. people are carrying them around and using them for whatever they're doing.. it's stunning.

I talked to the girl at the FiveRuns.com booth (see the picture at left) for a few minutes. They're giving away a MacBook Pro at the show, and based on their display, the Mac OS would appear to be one of their core platforms. The company is a little over a year old-- selling system management tools... and based on the glimpse I got of their stuff, clearly the Mac UI look, feel, usability principles are taken to heart by these guys..

Dell and HP have big sponsor presences here-- and both CEOs have given keynotes so far-- but the underlying theme here, as I see it, is that the Mac laptops are making a big push into the corporate environment.

In fact, while Oracle's Development head was having one of his guys give a product demo, showing off some integrated Order management and tracking process (BPEL in the background), the item he 'ordered' for the demo was an iMac! This is minutes after the HP CEO had just left the stage..

I'm not surprised that so many vendors are giving away iPods... that's only natural.. but the more I see Apple hardware floating around here, the more I believe there is a trend here.

The Streets of San Francisco

I'm in San Francisco this week for Oracle's OpenWorld Conference.
Flew out yesterday afternoon.. or was it the evening. I don't know.. Stopped over in Denver on the way and I think that hour in the Mountain time-zone really messed me up on what time it was where I left, where I was going. Who knows?

Flew on Frontier Airlines, which I have to say-- I had never heard of before. They appear to be a burgeoning competitor to SouthWest for the low-rate fare market. Based in Denver, they have a pretty good service going, with flights reaching as far as New York.. but their specialty is obviously points in the West and Southwest.

The best part was the in-flight entertainment.
I had basically conceded that I'd have to watch highlights of the ND-UCLA game at the hotel when I got here last night. My plane left at 2:55-- so when we took off, according to my Blackberry, the game was just at the end of the first quarter-- the Irish up 7-0. Not bad. We'll see how it looks when I land in Denver in a few hours, I thought.

So I sit in my seat and notice a little flat-screen TV embedded in the back of the seat in front of me. And as the flight attendants are talking, I realize that they're delivering 24 channels of DirectTV to that little screen.. so then I start really hammering the channel button to see if one of those channels is NBC.. and sure enough...!
For $5 I was able to watch the game, while also flipping back and forth to ESPN and ESPNNews.
And that little surcharge for the TV is, I'm sure, one of the ways they're able to offer the cheaper flights.
I didn't pay for the TV on the second leg of the trip from Denver to SFO, and as a result, that felt like a much longer flight.
Then again, perhaps that had something to do with the nature of that game and how the Irish struggled and hung in there, but were never able to get an offensive rhythm, honestly until the very last drive of the game.

I am SO glad to see that this team can put together a 1 minute drill, though. No more of the ridiculous play-calling fiasco's of the past 10 years where the coaching staff couldn't get the play call into the QB in time. Before the end of this play, Charlie has already get the next play call in the queue. And Brady-- for all his flaws-- really does step up when time is of the essence.

Don't think, just throw, Meat.

So as the captain comes on over the PA to announce that we're making our final descent into Denver, the TV gets muted and I watch as Brady makes that pass to Samardzija.. the cabin is quiet, except for me, muttering under my breath "Go, go, go!" And when he hits the end-zone, I had to throw my arms up in the air and shout (well, not exactly shout) "YES!" Guy behind me was an Alabama fan, also watching the game, so he and I had a chuckle about that as we were filing off the plane.

I started to feel like I was a commercial for this little airline.. and I realize I'm sounding like a similar ad now. So before anyone (who actually reads this) accuses me of being a schill, I'll cut this short for now.

Conference starts this evening.. and based on what I've already seen, there's an interesting trend here among the vendors.. more later.

Someone must be listening..

Well, just to bring closure to this little intrigue around Torre and Piniella.. thank goodness, it appears that George SteinBrenner reads this blog and has come to understand what a terrible mistake it would have been to fire Joe Torre.

I have no idea what this means for A-Rod.. I can't think, nor have I heard anyone else who can, of a trade scenario that would send A-Rod to another team..

The Yanks need pitching. That's the bottom line. Some good, strong, and hopefully young arms. And hopefully Cashman and the Boss can figure out where to get some (please, without gutting the farm system all over again)...

A foregone conclusion...

Well, this morning, it would appear to be a Foregone conclusion-- based on the papers (see Mike Lupica's column in the Daily News)and ESPN.com-- that Torre is gone and that Lou Piniella will be the new guy...
From this morning's story on ESPN:

Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, a special adviser to the Yankees who watched the
final two games in Detroit while sitting next to Cashman, told The New York
Times that while he was not surprised that Torre's job status was in question,
he didn't know what Torre could have realisitically done differently.
"It
seems like the great job he was doing all year, all that's forgotten," Jackson
told the newspaper.

The story goes on to cite players like Damon and others who think Torre's been too good for the majority of the season for his job to be at risk.

Obviously, these guys don't know who they're dealing with.

Change for change's sake shouldn't mean anything... it doesn't make sense to fire Torre over the inability of this lineup (largely constructed at the behest of Steinbrenner, himself) to score runs.
Torre can't hit for them.

But it would appear that, unless Brian Cashman or someone (Reggie!) can talk some sense into the Boss, that Torre's time in pinstripes is at an end..

And I, for one, am sorry more than I can say, to see it come to this.

Stunned Silence

From the cover of this morning's Daily News.

Okay.. I have been a TERRIBLE baseball blogger.
So consumed with college football, I haven't spent a single word on the Yankees' late season surge.

And now this morning (and last night), following the Irish domination of Stanford (I couldn't get enough.. I wanted to see more touchdowns; drop 50 on those smug Palo Alto jerks)...

But by yesterday, after watching the way the Yanks got shut out by the Tigers in Game Three.. I didn't have much hope. And this much bally-hoo'ed lineup looked simply impotent.

That said, in the wake of yesterday's embarassing end to the 2006 season, I still don't feel like the rumblings of big changes are headed in the right direction.

See stories here:
The Daily News,
The New York Times
The Post
NewsDay

But the most outrageous report-- the one that, when I heard the headline read over the radio, made me audibly gasp "Oh no!".. so much that my boys, both from their car-seats, were left asking "What? What is it, Daddy?".. is this story, also from the Post, that indicates that Torre will be fired and that Big George wants to re-hire... are you ready for this?.. Lou Piniella...

Let me just say.. if George does this, I'm seriously going ot have to reconsider my support for this team until Steinbrenner is (back) out of the picture..

The "L" is for Looney-Tunes!

Forgive me for the Springer-esque overtones here.. this is like a train wreck.. I just can't look away..

Does anyone have to wonder why the Spartans took the loss this week to lowly Illinois?
What with their coach still wrapped up in the meaningless controversy of last week's mini-brawl with the Irish and Coach Weis' contention that he got slapped somewhere in the mele...

If your coach is still thinking about LAST week, how much hope can you really have?
The man has clearly lost it.. but then again, he's 'lost it' before, hasn't he? (witness: last year's outburts during his half-time trot to the locker room during the MSU-OSU game-- "the coaches are ruining it!")

What's the over/under on John L remaining in East Lansing?